“i like my body when it is with your” by E. E. Cummings
“New Year's Eve Prayer” by Jeff Buckley
“Rain” by Roberto Bolaño
“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
“Spring Torrents” by Sara Teasdale
“Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
“A great Hope fell” by Emily Dickinson
“Poem” by Langston Hughes
“Sometimes I Pretend” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon” by Mary Oliver
“Summer Morning” by Mary Oliver
“You Are Tired (I Think)” by E. E. Cummings
“Sifter” by Naomi Shihab Nye
“Emergency Management” by Camille Rankine
“Thanksgiving 2006” by Ocean Vuong
“Litany” by Langston Hughes
“Suicide in the Trenches” by Siegfried Sassoon
“I heard a Fly buzz - when I died” by Emily Dickinson
“Warning” by Jenny Joseph
“[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]” by E. E. Cummings
“Love Sorrow” by Mary Oliver
“Conversations About Home (at the Deportation Centre)” by Warsan Shire
“Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out” by Richard Siken
“Limited but Fertile Possibilities Are Offered by This Brochure” by Marge Piercy
“The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass
“Mad Girl's Love Song” by Sylvia Plath
“The Century’s Decline” by Wislawa Szymborska
“A Primer For The Small Weird Loves” by Richard Siken
“Unpainted Door” by Louise Glück
“Spring has come back again” by Rainer Maria Rilke
“Homesickness” by Marina Tsvetaeva
“Don't Hesitate” by Mary Oliver
“There's a certain Slant of light” by Emily Dickinson
“Poem for Haruko” by June Jordan
“To Be Human Is to Sing Your Own Song” by Mary Oliver
“Toward a City That Sings” by June Jordan
“Edward the Confessor” by Eileen Myles (under the cut because I couldn't find it online)
Edward the Confessor
by Eileen Myles
I have a confession to make
I wish there were
some role in society
I could fulfill
I could be a confessor
I have a confession to make
I have this way when I step
into the bakery on 2nd Ave.
of wanting to be the only
really nice person in the store
so the harried sales woman
with several toned hair
will like me. I do this in all
kinds of stores, coffee shops
xerox shops, everywhere I go.
And invariably I leave my keys,
xeroxing, my coffee
from the last place
I am being so nice. I try
so hard to make a great
impression on these neutral
strangers right down to
the perfect warm smile
I get entirely lost and
stagger back out onto
the street, bereft
of something major.
It’s really leaning
too hard on the everyday.
My mother was
the kind of woman who
dragging us into stores
always seemed to charm the pants
off the cashier. She was such
a great person, so human
though at home she was
such a bitch, I mean really
distant. I imitate her and
I don’t do it well. She didn’t
leave her wallet
or us in a store.
I’m just a pale imitation
it is simply not my style
to open the hearts of
strangers to my true
personhood. I hope you accept
this tiny confession of what
I am currently going through.
And if you are experiencing
something of a similar nature
tell someone, not me,
but tell someone. It’s the new
human program to be in. It would
be nice for at least
these final moments if
we could sigh
with the relief
of being in
the same program
with all the
other humans
whispering
in school. I can’t quite locate
the terror, but I am trying
to be my mother
or Edward the Confessor
smiling down on you with up-praying
hands. I am looking down at the
tips of my boots as I step
across the balcony of the
church excited to be allowed
to say these things. Outside my church
is a relationship. On 11th street
this guy and this woman are selling
the woman so they can
get more dope. All their things
are there, rags and loaves of
bread and make-up.
And there was—
this was incredible.
Two men lying by the door
of the church giving
each other blow-jobs.
They were sort of street
guys, one black one white.
I said hey you can’t do
that here. They jumped
up, one spit come
out of his mouth. If you don’t
get out of here I’ll call
the cops. Don’t call the
cops we’ll go, we’ll leave.
That was a shock. That was more
than I expected to see in
a day. Something about
seeing the guy spit
come out of his
mouth. He didn’t
have to do that.
I guess I scared
him. I couldn’t
believe my eyes.
I was scared too.
today i love the red metal crane in her long neck arching her body over the boston skyline, which means i am okay for a moment. when i am unwell, everything is a little ugly. i always tell myself look for the beauty but when it is bad, i will look at birds and sunsets and little ducklings and feel absolutely nothing.
when my brother got his puppy, i was in a deep depression. what kind of monster isn't affected by a puppy. i was gentle and kind to her - i just didn't have an emotional reaction. she's five now and i feel like i spend all of our interactions apologizing to her - i don't know why. i just didn't feel anything. how embarrassing. i feel like if i admit that, i'll seem cruel and jaded. it comes in waves. like, two months ago when i went out into the world - it was like that. life behind a pane of stormglass. a firework could go off over your head - nothing. like dead skin, no reaction. not to ice cream or rainbows or baby chickens. life foggy and uninteresting.
i love goslings again. i love their little webbed feet splayed over grass. i love good food and live music and long walks. i like puppies. i feel like some kind of my soul has been starved - i keep staring at everything with wide eyes, trying to burrow the sensation into my stomach. it's real. beauty is real. when it's bad again, remember this. i stop and smell the flowers, feeling cliche in the moment. i like the white-to-red ombre of my neighbor's roses. i like colorcoding and yoga and cold drinks. i try to pass my hands over every moment, feeling like i'm squeezing joy out of every instant. remember this. for the love of god, it's real - just remember this.
I hate that I’m always trying to find cool biology themed stuff to wear but all the “nature inspired” clothing companies just have like two crossed arrows or a minimalistic mountain on a sweatshirt. Fucking lame, that’s barely even nature-adjacent. Put the life cycle of a salamander on a jacket, put hyena skeleton patterns on leggings, put a damn field guide of birds of prey on a peacoat and THEN you can have my money. Do NOT give me a shirt with a leaf on it that says “stay wild” or some bullshit I would much prefer clothing that broadcasts to everyone around me how many teeth an adult Jaguar has or how some pitcher plants can catch and digest rats.
Solstice Handmade fungi, arthropods, and various other animals
The Vet Med Artist mostly stickers/prints but they have a hoodie. Ink art exploring veterinary medicine
Laura Wolf Lots of silly bird art (prints through RB)
The Lincoln Forest national park apparel
Fernecreative more prints than apparel but Ferne illustrates (mostly British) wildlife
Coywolf Collections neat zoology art with some furries mixed in
Kelly Ballantyne not sure how much she makes in terms of clothing because her shop is on vacation at the moment, but this artist makes lots of bird illustrations
Moodymoon.co birds, fungi, plants, and other outdoor inspired art!
Mustardbeetle BUGS N BIRDS
Sipseywilder nature apparel of all kinds, bugs, cryptids, birds, plants, etc
Alex Tomlinson cute bird art, lots of art to do with birds and the postal service
Freehand Goods Florian wildlife
Avairia Art cute sea critters
Glitter and Toadstools all sorts of critters
Mothsprout lots of different kinds of critters, some furry stuff mixed in
Pikaloe cute cartoon nature critters, public shop is through rb but if you are a patron you get access to a secret shop
Chentomology bug art
Acorvi art mostly sea critters, cartoony style
Saxony Charlot Hawaiian wildlife I don’t see any apparel yet (though there are some buttons) but I figured I’d share anyway because a portion of profits goes to conservation in Hawaii
Lochnessie the “Birbie” dove design creator, they make lots of cartoony bird art. There aren’t any clothes listed at the moment but they do produce shirts occasionally
One day I would like to make clothing that fits this genre, but I am a full time student and I have a job (among other commitments) so that’s probably not gonna happen soon aha. Also I’m not sure how much I really want to deal with being “marketable.” But I may or may not make my own nature apparel one day :)
Hope is a discipline.
It’s work to be hopeful. It’s not like a fuzzy feeling. Like, you have to actually put in energy, time, and you have to be clear-eyed, and you have to hold fast to having a vision. It’s a hard thing to maintain. But it matters to have it, to believe that it’s possible, to change the world. You know, that we don’t live in a predetermined, predestined world where like nothing we do has an impact. No, no, that’s not true! Change is, in fact, constant, right? Octavia Butler teaches us. We’re constantly changing. We’re constantly transforming. It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily good or bad. It just is. That’s always the case. And so, because that's true, we have an opportunity at every moment to push in a direction that we think is actually a direction toward more justice.
—(Criminal justice activist) Mariame Kaba
“That’s why high school, or a crappy job, or any other restrictive circumstance can be dangerous: They make dreams too painful to bear. To avoid longing, we hunker down, wait, and resolve to just survive. Great art becomes a reminder of the art you want to be making, and of the gigantic world outside of your small, seemingly inescapable one. We hide from great things because they inspire us, and in this state, inspiration hurts.”
— One of the best articles I’ve ever read. Rookie Mag. By Spencer Tweedy. (via wildyork)
"The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist; a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain."
-Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
"Evil is boring. Right? I kinda believe in the banality and mundaneness of evil. Evil is just selfish impulses, which at the end of the day are really easy to understand. It’s easy to understand why people do bad things. It’s like “yeah, ok, you’re selfish and scared and cruel, I get it”. Being good is complex and beautiful and hard." - Brennan Lee Mulligan
the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.
kianamaiart
tangentwithtanner
germansingergirl
discoholicmusic
stormborns
2087
yousharknotpass
areudirty
origamiaround
blakekathryn
gamechangershow
